Females Dominate Males in Many Primate Species

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

3 MIN READ

Most primate societies have long been assumed to be male-dominated, but a new study shows many have females in charge or feature power sharing

BY SARA NOVAK



Credit: Phototrip/Getty Images

Female lemurs call the shots in their societies. Not only do dominant females choose their own mates; they also use prompts—such as tail and fur pulling or the occasional nip—with both males and females to dictate which other females in the group can mate. Primatologists have long categorized the
world’s 108 lemur species as a female-ruled outlier group among primates, with the vast majority of other primate societies thought to be male-dominated.

But a recent study in Animals calls this assumption into question. Though male power is more common overall among primate species, it’s by no means the default social dynamic. In fact, in 42 percent of the species examined in the study, primates lived in groups in which females were either dominant or on a level playing field with males.

“The traditional old-school thinking in primatology has always been around male dominance, but this study allows us to rethink that,” says Erin Vogel, a primatologist at Rutgers University, who was not involved in the new research.

The study’s authors used statistical modeling to examine dominance and factors that might contribute to it in 79 living primate species. These factors included sexual dimorphism (differences between males and females in body size and other physical characteristics), the number of females in each group that went into heat simultaneously, the length of time in which those animals were in heat and the female-male ratio within each group.

The study found that dominance didn’t correspond to how close species were evolutionarily or geographically, but it did correlate with a predictable set of features—including whether males were larger than females and whether males’ canine teeth were bigger. In species where the females and males had a similar body and canine size, females either dominated or shared power equally with males.

More:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/females-dominate-males-in-many-primate-species/